The web Site for sharing views of Pension matters relating to Army, Navy & Air Force veterans, Pay Commission related suggestions, DA and the latest News.Service and Armed Forces Veterans are invited to share with this site. This web site has been conceived by Capt KS Ramaswamy(Veteran)

ALL VETERANS ARE REQUESTED TO SEE THE WEB SITE & GIVE YOUR VALUABLE COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONSGet this Widget

Friday, 15 July 2016

The following message is of importance to all Defence Services Pensioners/ Family Pensioners.

In case you have not yet received the latest PPO, please do follow up and send the necessary information to PCDA, Allahabad soonest.

Please convey this to the maximum number of pensioners etc whom you may know, thanks.

__________________

Our Esteemed Veterans and Next of Kin,

1. There have been a few changes in the pension policy post implementation of 6 CPC. One major change is, doing away with weightage and calculation of pension as per rank and qualifying service. Post 6 CPC the pensions have been revised many times i.e in 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014 (as OROP).

2. To cater for these changes PCDA (Pension) Allahabad undertook “Project Sangam” and printed fresh corrigendum PPO’s for all pre-6CPC retirees so that they get the correct rate of pension. As per PCDA (P) Allahabad they have printed and dispatched approx 14 lakh ‘Sangam PPO’s’ to all pre-2006 pensioners (including widows & NOKs).

3. Our interaction on ground with pensioners reveal that many of the pensioners do not have this PPO which is generated post 2009 with them. If you do not have this PPO which is issued after 2009; please act as follows.

(a) JCOs, ORs and NOKs. Please write to respective Record Offices for getting a copy of your Sangam PPO’s.

(b) Officers and NOKs. Visit www.pcdapension.nic.in. On the front page at the bottom, you shall find a scroll giving some details. Above the scroll you shall see in red fonts written ‘Sangam Project PPO in respect of Commissioned Officer’. Please click on this and fill in the details and send to sangam cell <cdasangam@gmail.com> /cda-albd@nic.in to get Sangam PPO’s.

Please Note that PPO’s are your most priced documents and PPO’s are to be preserved. The toll free helpline number of PCDA (P) Allahabad is 18001805325.

The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Central government in a petition filed by the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement seeking a declaration that non-implementation of the ‘One rank one pension scheme’ violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.The matter was heard by a Bench of Justices DipakMisraand C Nagappan. Senior Advocate RamJethmalaniappeared for the petitioner. The petitioner is a body of ex-servicemen’s organisations as well as individual military veterans from all three defence forces – Army, Navy and Air Force. One rank one pension is the uniform payment of pension to ex-servicemen who retire in the same rank with the same length of service irrespective of their date of retirement. It also involves future enhancement in the rates for recent pensioners being passed on to the past pensioners. In the petition drawn by advocate Arunava Mukherjee and filed through advocate Balaji Srinivasan, the petitioners have given an exhaustive history of OROP. They have claimed that OROP was followed for 26 years after independence but was “unjustly changed” in 1973 on the recommendation of the Third Central Pay Commission.

The petition then goes on to criticise both the UPA government and the current NDA government for denying OROP to ex-servicemen. According to the petitioner, the UPA government “astronomically enhanced the salary of civil servants” and introduced Non-functional Financial Upgradation scheme for civil servants but the same was not allowed for Defence services.

“… these decisions had the effect of arbitrarily and discriminatorily downgrading the pay-grades, pension, allowances and status of Defence Services”, the petition states.

The petitioner has also trained its gun on the current NDA government. Under the head “False promises made to ex-servicemen and electoral fraud on voters”, the petition states that,

“During his election campaign, Mr. Narendra Modi promised that OROP will be implemented. Although, the Hon’ble Defence Minister had worked out a package with an expected outlay of Rs. 8296.40 crores per annum, it is yet to be implemented.”

However, the major grievance of the petitioner is that though the Central government sanctioned OROP, the true meaning of OROP was, “Illegally twisted by the government to create a perverse definition and murder the spirit of the OROP.”

In a letter written on November 7, 2015, by the Joint Secretary of Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare, to the Chiefs of Army Staff, Naval Staff and Air Staff, the settled and true definition of OROP was “arbitrarily and cunningly altered”.

“It described OROP as uniform payment of pension to retired servicemen retiring in the same rank with the same length of service, regardless of their date of retirement which implies bridging the gap between the rates of pension of current and past pensioners at periodic intervals. It is submitted that the new perverse definition of OROP does not include that any future enhancement in the rates for recent pensioners would be “automatically” passed on to the past pensioners.”

The petitioner has contended that this new definition will lead to a situation where the pension of an ex-serviceman who retired earlier will be less than the pension drawn by an ex-serviceman who retires in 2014 until an annual periodic review is done to correct the anomaly.

Relying on the case of Union of India v. SPS Vains, the petitioner has submitted that this is arbitrary, unconstitutional and violation of Articles 14 and 21. Based on the above, the petitioner has made of slew of prayers including a prayer to quash the letter of November 7, 2015 as unconstitutional.

The Court after hearing the matter issued notice to the Centre, with the matter likely to be listed after eight weeks.

7th Pay Commission Allowances – Clubbing of examination of Common Allowances such as House Rent Allowance, Dearness Allowance, Children Education Allowance, Transport Allowance etc with lesser known and paid to few only allowances would cause more delay

7th Pay Commission Allowances – It may be recalled that 7th Pay Commission abolished as many as 51 allowances after examining 196 existing Allowances and also subsumed 37 Allowances.

As a result of such major change in 7th Pay Commission Allowances, Cabinet has decided that recommendations in respect of all the allowances are to be examined by a Committee headed by Finance Secretary.

In continuation of our earlier letter of even number dated 8th July, 2016, wherein clarification was issued, whether payment of salaries based on 7th CPC recommendations will be made from current month or otherwise, it is hereby clarified that; salary of August month will be based on 7th CPC recommendations.

Without the hike in allowances, the salaries which government employees would receive from August 1 would be hiked by 14.29 per cent. This would be the lowest ever salary hike implemented by any Pay Commission in the past 70 years.

The implementation of 7th Pay Commission will positively impact a total of 47 lakh central government employees, along with 53 lakh pensioners. The revised CPC recommendations tabled by the Empowered Committee of Secretaries received the approval of Union Cabinet on June 29. The notification of the salary hike is expected to be issued early next week.

Disclaimer

The contents posted on these Web Site are personal reflections of the Viewers and do not reflect the views of the "Indian Military Veterans- Web" Team. Neither the "Indian Military Veterans -Web" nor the individual authors of any material on these Web accept responsibility for any loss or damage caused (including through negligence), which anyone may directly or indirectly suffer arising out of use of or reliance on information contained in or accessed through these Web.

This is not an official Web site. This forum is run by team of ex- Indian Army, Veterans for social networking of Indian Defence Veterans. It is not affiliated to or officially recognized by the MoD or the AHQ, or Government/ State.

The Indian Military Veterans Forum will endeavor to edit/ delete any material which is considered offensive, undesirable and or impinging on national security. The WebTeam is very conscious of potentially questionable content. However, where a content is posted and between posting and removal from the Web in such cases, the act does not reflect either the condoning or endorsing of said material by the Team.